Risk...or was it Guess?

The experience of playing Risk was the most unique board game experience I've had -which is of course, one of its strengths. Risk was one of the first board games with non-linear movement¹; that combined with the multiple game components, and the unique strategies involved it was quickly a game that corporations wanted to license, and that people wanted to buy.

Among its strengths are the universality of human ambition to conquer and gain. It is a challenging game, as opposed to games based around gambling or movement as dictated by a die or spinner. Although Go, Chess, Stratego, or Checkers also require strategic know how and provide a healthy, enjoyable challenge, they have the restriction of being two player games; Risk outshines these by providing an environment that can accommodate up to 6 players, or more if it is altered and played by house rules. In more recent times, another element of universality has been added to Risk by releasing special editions of it pertaining to specific themes: such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Transformers². Despite the necessity for strategy, there are still random elements to even out game play; these include attack success based on the roll of dice, the ability to gain armies by drawing cards and attaining poker like combination, and the fact that territories are distributed randomly based on what cards are dealt at the start of the game. This makes it more appealing to weaker players.

All of these are certainly elements that make the game of Risk an ongoing classic, but it is not without drawbacks. The game play itself, and the accompanying rules, are quite confusing to pick up. The limitations to attacking each turn need to be more clear in the rule book; also, starting a game and just running with it through the rule book from there is no simple matter to a group of inexperienced players. My experience playing in class, with two other people who had not played the game before either, was interesting but not engaging. There were many details to the rules that we did not get to, and keeping track of the protocol of our turns in how much we did read about was tedious at best. The best possible experience of learning the game would probably be to have a well seasoned player guiding a group of new players through the turns.

In summary; Risk needs to have an abridged and clearly written set of rules, but is other wise a stimulating and fun board game.

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1: http://www.hasbro.com/risk/default.cfm?page=history

2: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/24292